


Beata Maria

by Schwoozie



Category: The Hour
Genre: Angst, Backstory, F/M, Hate Sex, One Shot, Pre-Canon, Spanish Civil War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 02:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schwoozie/pseuds/Schwoozie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Randall stumbled into the room to find her thus – lounging like the Venuses of the Museo del Prado, bare but for a pair of silk trousers and reading glasses, cigarette ash freckling the curves of her breasts."</p><p>Randall, Lix, Spain, and the beginning of the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beata Maria

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for brief descriptions of war violence against civilians, and allusions to mental illness.

Randall stumbled into the room to find her thus – lounging like the Venuses of the Museo del Prado, bare but for a pair of silk trousers and reading glasses, cigarette ash freckling the curves of her breasts. She was working through his copy, squinting in the afternoon light. A pencil tapped pensively against her temple. Her wild black hair, difficult in the best of circumstances and untamable in the field, haloed her face like a dark Madonna. His gaze caught on the sharp lines of her hip and collarbone, the straight, no-nonsense curve of her waist; he had enough time to wonder whether Freud had ever found such a sight upon his couch before he tilted into the stockings she hung to dry beside her negatives. Only a providential desk edge kept him from tumbling himself and an entire week of work to the floor. She glanced at him over the rims of her glasses, then returned to reading.

“I hope you remembered to count your change before you drank yourself under the table.”

“Desperate times, my dear.”

Lix glanced at him again, then tossed him the copy. He grabbed at it frantically, smoothing the edges. She labored not to roll her eyes.

“You're still splicing your commas. And when you describe the executions, don't use so many adjectives; newsmen don't eulogize.”

He squinted at the negative dangling by his nose. An elderly woman clutched a doorframe, sobbing and oblivious of the military men striding past her.

“What did you caption this, then? 'Spanish matron overjoyed at sudden holiday?'”

He remembered this moment. He had not known whether to use his notebook to record or to bludgeon the Madrileños streaming past them, clutching children and chickens and the pots they had been holding, had forgotten to put down, in their panic as the rebels approached. Grease fumes stung his throat and his entire body shuddered with the strangled sobs of “ _madre de dios, ruega por nostros_ ” as the rifle reports sliced them in two. Lix had dashed about with the damned Leica glued to her face, screaming at him for forgetting to pack her spare film, knocking through the crowd until Randall and their Spanish guide managed to drag her away. Once in France they made vicious, violent love until he could not stand the mess of their hurried unpacking. Randall later woke to the splashes of her tears in the developer, but did not go to her – he counted the drops, flinched when they ended at 63 – he was still tapping the remaining 37 against his leg by the time she slipped back in beside him, turned towards the wall.

Now, the Leica was at the bottom of her luggage and the negatives hung in neat rows across their laundry line.

He turned away from the film and she swam through his bleary eyes. Her elbows rested behind her on the edge of the couch, the cigarette tapping against a rugged fingernail. She was looking at him over her glasses again. He wanted to rip them from her face – he wanted to suck himself hoarse on her breasts – he wanted to shave that damned hysterical hair and drown it in the river like a cat. He poured her a whiskey and she took the bottle.

She ignored him until he had his clothes off and then moved atop him. She did not let him kiss her, but he remembered other times her mouth had tasted of whiskey and licked at her throat as if he could catch the drops as they slithered inside her. She squeezed him painfully when he turned to look after her crumpled trousers and he closed his eyes tight, counting backwards and forwards to the press of her hands, to the huff of their breaths, to the _Ave Marias_ , millions of them, negative spaces all crouched in a row.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my fiction class, under the prompt "write a one-page love scene set in a wartime crisis".
> 
> Not really love, but you get the point.
> 
> This is the image that inspired the story (NSFW-ish): http://schwoozie.tumblr.com/post/51613308253/sudden-urge-to-write-spanish-civil-war-era
> 
> And the negative Randall looks at (screencap from 1x05): http://i.imgur.com/XBdDML7.png


End file.
